KOCHI: Startup Village is set to witness a pivotal role change with one of its key pacesetters, Sijo Kuruvilla George, moving to the Board of Directors after passing the baton to current Chief Operating Officer Pranav Kumar Suresh.
Pranav will take over as the Chief Executive Officer of India’s first mobile-internet business incubator from July this year.
“I am glad to have had an opportunity to help Startup Village navigate through its nascent stages,” said Sijo, the founding CEO of Startup Village.
“The role change will give me a chance to focus on the larger ecosystem challenges and issues faced by the organisation,” he added.
Pranav, an IIM-C graduate, joined Startup Village as the COO 14 months ago with a solid vision to take the organisation to new heights. Before joining Startup Village, he was working with the accelerated leadership programme at the Hinduja Group company, Ashok Leyland.
“I am glad to bring the operational skills that I have gained in my career so far to Startup Village,” Pranav said. “I am looking forward to the successful implementation our key operational targets for 2016. Startup Village’s big projects like the ‘Landing Pad’ being set up in Silicon Valley will require focused efforts by Sijo and I hope his new role will give him an added advantage in addressing greater challenges,” said Startup Village chairman Sanjay Vijayakumar.
“I congratulate Pranav on his new assignment. Pranav’s operational blueprint for the incubator has been approved by the Board for implementation and these aggressive targets would mean that he will be given full freedom to execute them,” said Kris Gopalakrishnan, the chief mentor of Startup Village.
The team’s goal is to make Startup Village one of the world’s top 10 destinations for start-ups. For the next two years, the organisation has set a number of operational targets, including bringing in new people on board, setting up the Fab Labs in participation with the MIT Centre for Bits and Atoms, Boston; implementing the Raspberry Pi programme for schoolchildren, executing the seed fund programme, rolling out the Startup Village App, setting up Boot camps in 500 colleges and scaling up the infrastructure facility to 3,00,000 sq ft from the existing 15,000 sq ft.